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When I was a youngster, I devoured books until my eyes grew hazy. Once my exams arrived, I demonstrated the stamina of a monk, studying for lengthy periods without a break. But in lately, I’ve watched that ability for deep concentration fade into infinite scrolling on my phone. My focus now shrinks like a slug at the touch of a thumb. Engaging with books for pleasure seems less like sustenance and more like a marathon. And for someone who creates content for a profession, this is a professional hazard as well as something that made me sad. I aimed to restore that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a modest vow: every time I came across a word I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an article, or an overheard discussion – I would research it and record it. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or fountain pen. Just a running list maintained, ironically, on my phone. Each week, I’d spend a few moments reviewing the collection back in an attempt to lodge the vocabulary into my memory.

The record now covers almost twenty sheets, and this small ritual has been subtly life-changing. The payoff is less about showing off with uncommon descriptors – which, to be honest, can make you sound insufferable – and more about the mental calisthenics of the ritual. Each time I search for and note a term, I feel a faint stretch, as though some underused part of my brain is stirring again. Even if I never use “phantom” in dialogue, the very act of spotting, logging and revising it breaks the slide into passive, superficial attention.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it acts as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been thinking about and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy routine to keep up. It is often extremely impractical. If I’m engaged on the tube, I have to pause mid-paragraph, pull out my device and enter “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger squeezed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The e-reader, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently forget to do), dutifully scrolling through my expanding word-hoard like I’m preparing for a word test.

In practice, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these terms into my everyday conversation. “Incorrigible” was adopted. “mournful” as well. But most of them stay like museum pieces – admired and catalogued but seldom used.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I find myself turning less often for the same overused handful of descriptors, and more frequently for something precise and muscular. Few things are more gratifying than discovering the exact term you were searching for – like locating the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into position.

In an era when our devices siphon off our attention with merciless efficiency, it feels rebellious to use my own as a tool for slow thought. And it has restored to me something I feared I’d forfeited – the joy of exercising a mind that, after a long time of slack scrolling, is finally waking up again.